If I can't live for you
by Fukuro
Summary: A new millenium is approaching, and everyone's happy, but Tao Ren. He misses a certain person, and can't see any way out of the pain, but one... Death fic. Rated T for safety. May be more K.


Note: **Death fic.** One person will die (although, I couldn't bear to make it a "he's gone forever", I'll spare that for some other story), and it can be a little hard to tell why he wants to die. Anyway, I don't hate that character in any way, I was just bored and felt like killing someone. Arigato.

---

It was just seventeen minutes left to the new year – year 2000. Every window in Funbari glowed, and the sky was lit up with fireworks, making the snow sparkling in every colour imaginable. Everyone was cheerful – everyone but one young boy. He missed someone – someone that had left for a new world, never to come back.

His name was Tao Ren.

He was sitting in the garden, leaning against the house he lived in, on a snowy stone bench. Snowflakes was sprinkling his hair, then melting and making his hair wet. His trademark – the hair spike – was beginning to lose grip of itself and falling apart, leaving wet, purple locks hanging free to become icicles. He could hear the screams and laughters and screams at the other side of the house. Apparently Horo Horo was in charge of the entertainment again. Yoh was right, he would make a much better comedian than Chocolove. Ren couldn't help smiling a little as he pressed his legs closer to himself. He wanted to be there to, laughing with the others. But he couldn't. Not when that certain person wasn't around.

Suddenly he heard the sound of cracking snow, and he looked up. Yoh was standing at his side.

"Can I sit here?"

Ren didn't answer, but Yoh seated anyway. He looked up at the sparkling sky and sighed. "The stars are beautiful tonight."

"Baka, you can barely see the stars with all the fireworks."

Yoh stared at Ren with a very childish face. "Really? I thought that was the angels way to celebrate the new year: popping the stars over and over, like immortal balloons!"

Ren began laughing. "Silly, there's no thing such as immortal balloons!"

"That's how it is now, but when I'm becoming the Shaman King, I shall create them! That becomes fireworks when you pop them!"

Ren stopped laughing, and added "But they already exist, and they're called stars!"

"But these will contain helium as well!"

Ren didn't really know what was funny about that, but he began laughing anyway. When he had stopped, Yoh tapped his back. "Hey, you don't really seem depressed, why don't you join us?"

"I'm missing him..."

"Who?"

"... Hao..."

Yoh hesitated. He couldn't bear to hear his name. "I had to kill him, he was a threat to humanity."

"I was too, but you didn't kill me. And once you told me that no bad guys can see ghosts."

"I was wrong... but you never knew him! How can you feel sorry for him?"

Ren pushed his legs even closer to his chest, and closed his eyes. "He was not beyond saving, I could tell that by looking at him. I saw a person, just like the old me, and I wanted to save him..."

Yoh looked down at the snow, then sighed. "You're right. But I didn't know how to, and the only way out I saw when he devoured the Great Spirit was taking his life. I'm sorry..."

They sat there for fourteen minutes, just silent, but it seemed like an eternity. Suddenly, Yoh got up and brushed the snow off his clothes. "Well, I have to go, the new year is approaching. You're coming?"

"I'll be there soon. Just let me be alone for a couple of seconds first."

Yoh smiled. "Sure thing."

But as soon as Yoh had disappeared around the corner, Ren walked over to the garden pond and stepped out on it. The ice seemed pretty thick, but the pond was way too deep to be frozen all the way down. He took up his sword, and thrusted it into the ice. It made a crack just big enough for him to get into. He looked at the backs of the crowd celebrating, then slid down into the freezing water, getting down under the ice. He could hear the crowd counting down from 60.

59, 58, 57, 56, 55, 54, 53, 52, 51, 50, 49, 48... His arms and legs became numb... 36, 35, 34, 33, 32... He began having a hard time breathing... 23, 22, 21, 20, 19... The mid-blue light from above disappeared and the lake seemed warm...

After a time that seemed like eternity, he was up at the ground again, watching Horo Horo pop up from the lake with a body on his shoulder. Everyone else was standing around him, and he gave them a sad face as he laid the corpse on the ground. It was a short and skinny boy, with long, purple hair and yellow scarf. The eyes were closed, and Ren immediately knew who it was. It was him. Nobody dared saying anything, not even sniffle as they cried. Ren remained silent as well, he didn't want them to notice him.

Suddenly, he felt someone tapping his shoulder. He looked up, and saw a boy with waist-long, brown hair, red puffy chaps and a white poncho stand beside him. The boy grinned. "Shinnen omedeto, Ren-kun."(Happy new year, Ren)

"Hao? I thought you had moved on to the other side!"

"Naah. I bet that's a pretty boring place. At least without you. See, I told you you would join me sooner or later!"

Ren smiled as he felt Haos hand on his shoulder.

"What should we do now? Reincarnate, become fixed ghosts, go to heaven, hunt shamans or frighten preps playing 'ghost in the glass'?"

Ren pointed at the crowd below. "I'd say we frighten the hell out of them first."


End file.
